Due to the perceived increase in violence in the world, particularly violence perpetuated by so-called “terrorists”, there is an ever-increasing desire to improve security. Security means the ability to identify and prevent violent events before the events occur. In order to identify and prevent violent events, it usually is necessary and often mandatory, to identify individual who will foment the violence.
This is often a difficult task. A group of individuals under surveillance may sympathize with terrorists but may have neither the contacts nor the desire to engage in terroristic activities themselves. The ability to determine whether any members of the group have contacts with terrorists, or are themselves terrorists, is often difficult without a positive identification or overt acts preparing or perpetrating terroristic activities. It is a commonplace that terrorists use aliases and disguises that make positive identification difficult, if not impossible.
One method to positively identify individuals is through biometrics. Biometrics—fingerprints, retinal details, facial appearance, etc.—are unique to individuals and difficult to counterfeit. A problem with biometrics is that biometrics usually only are collected from individuals who already have run afoul of security apparatus or the criminal justice system. Civil libertarians view widespread collection of biometrics solely for the purpose of security as an invasion of privacy and resist efforts by government to make biometric collection mandatory.
Nonetheless, those seeking a service from a private entity, often agree to provide a biometric in exchange for the service such as, for example, an airline flight. Even though the biometrics are provided voluntarily, the individuals providing the biometrics desire that they be used only for limited purposes. In particular, the expectation is that the provided biometrics will be compared to collections of biometrics collected from individuals who are security threats. Since most individuals providing the biometrics in the example airline flight situation are law-abiding, they have no problem with providing a biometric sample for a limited purpose. Individuals, nonetheless, do not desire that other entities be able to collect their biometrics and add them to a permanent collection solely because they desire to take an airline flight, for instance.
Similar concerns arise when a private employer seeks to use biometrics for employee screening purposes. The private employer does not wish to add to the permanent collection of, for example, the FBI by providing the FBI with identity information associated with biometrics for individuals that the FBI does not have records for. Instead, the private employer only desires to know if potential employees have criminal records.
There are additional concerns arising from situations where intelligence has been gathered regarding individuals and subversive groups that pose security risks. When security agencies from different countries, or even within a country, seek to exchange information regarding individuals who pose security risks, the agencies are often confronted with problems associated with disclosure. For instance, a first security agency may have identified a particular individual as a security risk, and discloses this information to the second security agency to determine if the second security agency knows anything about the activities of the individual. It may turn out that the individual is unknown to the second security agency. If the second security agency has been infiltrated by moles, a mole may tip off the individual that he is known to the first security agency as a potential security risk. Accordingly, security agencies are reluctant to disclose lists of individuals for screening and intelligence gathering purposes to other security agencies because the disclosure may be made known to the individuals on the list who can then change their behavior by, for instance, switching operations to a new country. In addition, if a list is denominated as, for example, “all individuals from subversive group A known to the first security agency that pose a threat”, when the list is disclosed to the second security agency, the mole can identify if anyone from subversive group A has escaped the attention of the first security agency. Further, there may be restrictions on the type of information that may be divulged to the security agency of a different country. For example, the country of a security agency may not allow biometrics of its citizens to be disclosed to a security agency from another country.
Accordingly, there is an increasing desire for entities that wish to use biometrics for screening purposes to be able to use them in a manner that satisfies their customers. For instance, the entities desire methods and apparatus that allow them to perform the screening operation without serving as an effective collecting apparatus for other entities who desire to have a biometric for as many individuals as possible to improve security.